Venkefedo

Perhaps Skull Island is an exclusive? Those are missing from at least some other themes' pics, too... I'm not a huge pirate guy, but I have a soft spot for them (and regret not getting more of the POTC sets or either of the ships)... some nice-looking sets & figures in here, and some of the 'misses' some have mentioned (like no black tricorn hats, no red epaulets, etc) at least can easily be remedied by a quick BrickLink trip.

"official premiere"; online doesn't count in this case. I've avoided it because it's not the premiere date, and I'm trying to finish A New Dawn beforehand (I might manage the final 50-something pages before premiere-time tonight).

Nice little vignette! I love the blue gem as a holographic display... and slapping saber hilts & technic pins onto blasters is loads of fun & changes up weapons nicely! (I love the gray half-pin on the small pistols, to make DH-17s for various rebels and DSTs)

It's a beast of burden on a desert world, the flaps of skin serve as insulation of some form and/or allow the creature to store extra water or something. But, really, all you need to know is it's alien. It doesn't have to resemble life on our world in every respect... Banthas are covered in thick, long fur, which we don't really see on large desert-dwelling mammals on Earth, mynocks can live comfortably within the gullet of giant space slugs feeding on who knows what (since ships hiding in the slug are probably few & far between), etc... Today's the day! The official premiere of Rebels... and better looks at stuff in the show that will be reflected in the upcoming sets!

That'd be Narcissa Malfoy's dress, if I'm not mistaken (from the HP Forbidden Forest set)

Nope. Seems most retailer-exclusives aren't among the pics found... same with Star Wars (Anakin's Custom Starfighter and the Hailfire Droid set aren't expected in the upcoming photos). Exclusives aren't necessarily the only pictures from any given theme missing, they just seem to be the most common ones missing. When it turns up, you won't even have to ask. People will be talking about it, quoting the link in replies, etc.

It may be a problem with all of 12! I saw someone mention their Hun had a fairly loose helmet... and mine does, too, tho others have had no problem. My Princess hat seems fine, tho, so I think there might just be several duds scattered around the series.

Those shanties are great! Nice rumble, too... lots of good stuff in here.

My 1 Hun has a bit of a loose helmet, too... Target sold out of all their stock, hopefully they get a new shipment soon! I wanna get several more Huns just to compare helmet fit

Incredible! I was another wondering how much of the build was real, or it were all LDD or something, until that no-Photoshop pic. Wow.

And two Crocs or two Eagles will give you 3 full sets of eyes! ...I'd love to get some extras, too, but I gotta clear out some of my non-Lego toys first, or the wife will be the Red Riding Hood to my wary white wolf!

This just sold me on the white wolf! It's the one Legends Beast I haven't nabbed yet... he'd best watch himself around that axe-toting little kid!

Okay, that makes sense with how the Illegal Mining Bros (new on the Wii U this holiday season!) could be brought there so quickly

The problem with Fan's Choice is sometimes the company doesn't actually give you what the fans voted for... the last Hasbro one, for instance, had two distinct versions of Mara Jade in the running: Emperor's Hand Mara and Jedi Master Mara Skywalker. Luke's wife won, because the previous two Mara figures (1998 and the Comic Pack one) were in the sleeveless catsuit she wore in most art & photos of her as Emperor's Hand, in addition to how she appeared in the Thrawn comics and elsewhere; fans wanted Jedi Mara in a Jedi-type outfit to represent an older more mature character, mother of Ben Skywalker, but Hasbro told its designers "do whatever you want"... ...so we got Emperor's Hand Mara instead, in a black sleeveless catsuit (the only difference is it wasn't blue, like the previous two figures), with her unique saber which traditionally is associated with her Emperor's Hand days. Many thought she'd used Luke's old saber for a long time, that he gifted her at the end of the Thrawn Trilogy, tho the books rarely go into specifics of what saber she had years later as a Jedi. In any case, it's not what fans voted for... something like this could happen with Lego, too; fans vote for the Ebon Hawk, and they give us a KOTOR swoop instead... fans vote for a Bastila Shan minifig, and we get a different Satele Shan instead. I dunno. That whole last Hasbro poll really, really annoyed me... but if Disney really did say "quit making anything from the EU", that annoys me more, since they're cutting off so much potential from the last couple decades of material.

Agreed... he's got a fantastic torso & leg print, a great helmet, and an amazing shield and cape, but... Mitgardia is more Nordic. That doesn't mean the Hun can't represent a different ethnicity in Mitgardia (Huns, I think, were steppe-dwellers, and steppe is only a few degrees off tundra! ), but Vikings tend to fit the bill for "official Mitgardian representative". But the helmet, shield, cape, and body can easily be used in Mitgardian character builds (swap the arms for green or yellow! ...of course, then the question is "is he bare-armed or wearing a yellow shirt?", one more reason I'm tempted to build fleshie characters--the variety isn't quite there, yet, however, nor the prices!) Here's a question... where is Amortug located? I've seen the old maps showing Omurtag, but haven't found one marking the new post-Revolword dwarven capital... and has anyone established, lore-wise, any specific dwarven cities in the western mountains? Given the proximity to the Orcish Marches, that's where I've been planning many AoM builds (often dwarves vs orcs) while figuring there'd be at least a couple sizable dwarf cities under the peaks... hopefully there's room for a new one (tho I doubt I'll ever be so ambitious as to build a Thorshaven or Mpya Stedor!)

Agreed; I'm also hopeful they'll go ahead and canonize KOTOR/TOR. It's thousands of years before the films, so unless VII drastically changes Sith origins entirely and other ancient history elements, it seems silly to leave that other era off in Legends-land (even if that era connects with stuff that will remain Legends, like Exar Kun's spirit returning on Yavin IV several years after Endor) May the 4th figures are great, but I hope that won't be the only way to hope for EU goodies. Anyhoo... nice to get at least one Microseries set!

I wondered about that, too... perhaps it has to do with the fabric? A typical Lego cape is very papery, so a circular hole works fine; the Hun cape is fuzzy cloth, and might risk tearing if it only had a small circular hole. The wider cut might just be more forgiving?

I believe there are many valid leaks (the overhead shots of the Rebel/Republic hangar base), but that it's especially likely for folks to whip up plenty of fakery as well (the supposed villain who looks almost exactly like a Yuuzhan Vong)... leaks will happen, even on an Abrams project, but I'm still hopeful all the story leaks are way off the mark (the "floating hand & saber" one have to be, it's dumber than the dumbest stuff you can find in the Brackett ESB draft) and that any ties REBELS has with VII aren't as heavy as "Oh, hey, 'the Inquisitor'? Yeah, he's not 'the' only one... here, have a dozen more who have been hunting Luke ever since Palpatine died!" Less than 48 hours, hopefully, until we see some final pics of most of the winter wave! Really looking forward to how the ITT troops look, and the rest of the Rebels sets!

I think he meant that only Ghostbusters & the Classic Spaceman have the small light bley bars... EDIT: nope, I'm wrong! They don't even have gray ones... Ecto-1 has a brown one, the Classic Spaceman has a black one for the robot... and both colors are in lots of sets.

Those chrome stormies may be fake... they also have different muzzles and high collars resembling the Galaxy Patrol-type armor, so regular stormies in gray wouldn't work. They're also chrome; "shadow troopers" would not apply as a name for shiny chrome stormies (the pics, which are preliminary of course, show gray helmets--not silver). Working on EpVII sets "right now" doesn't mean "they'll be out this December/January"... the movie is still filming, the sets are likely still being designed based on the ever-changing info being handed off to licensees. The earliest we might see a VII set will be in next summer's releases. You're kidding yourself if you think there's any kind of chance that the Shadowtroopers set is from Episode VII.

Thank you! Glad the orcishness came thru. Hadn't even thought of the Orc Forge set, really, but the aesthetic of the Orc Forge and Goblin King Battle are kinda right there in my thoughts on "orcish", along with the Troll Mountain Fortress and Combee's very WoW-orcish Ogre tower Thanks! I haven't done much more than sketch ideas for Phase 3, but I'm itching to build it, so I can use the same base (and then scrap it all to focus on other AoM and Challenge III builds). Thanks! Again, tho, it's mostly stolen from Combee's build. My walkway doesn't cling to the tower as snugly, hence the extra supports at the turns, but it was fun to do. Thank you! Thanks! I wanted to try something a little different, having the evolution occur in the same location but by different factions taking turns... I hope to continue that in some of my other builds, like the wall, gatehouse, maybe a few others. I feel like I was a little trapped by the Phase 1 there... I wanted it to be the same base, and I only built those slivers of mountainside on the edge there... I'll see if I can expand them a bit. I tried to make the ground beneath the tower interesting with the rubble of the previous phase's stone outpost. Thanks... yeah, some more mountainside would be nice. Maybe I'll take a crack at that before demolishing this tower for Phase 3... and I gotta figure out a white backdrop, too... I don't really have a good photo spot yet, just the card table near a wall in the living room! I'm sure there's a thread or two about all this that I've forgotten I meant to read ages ago! Thanks for the comments... and thanks again to Combee for building the MOC that inspired this whole idea!

Yay!

I recall reading somewhere--which may have just been fan theory rather than fact--that Viper can be used by the MCU if she's only called "Madame Hydra". Tho Quicksilver has his nickname & real name in both DOFP and AoU, I think, so maybe it's just that Viper can't be ninja-affiliated in the MCU... eh, who knows? They can always introduce a different 'Madame Hydra' instead. Even if not, there are plenty of other Hydra baddies they can pull from... not to mention non-Hydra baddies, too, like Creel!

Flashbacks have no place in the main SW films, outside of Force-visions or maybe holo-recordings... even then, probably not a great idea. Palpatine being a Force ghost kinda goes counter to everything (admittedly little) the movies & TCW told us, and "not actually dead" is just Dark Empire, pushed back another 25 years or so, and that's a terrible idea. The main point, tho, is Summer 2015 is the earliest we might see a VII preview set (May 4th could be the earliest we see a VII minifig, tho there are still probably dozens of other choices from the existing movies, shows, and EU I can think of; we got Revan this year, why not Thrawn next year? It'd be a nice nod what was once considered by many as the sequel trilogy). We got two "Desolation of Smaug" sets early because of the late decision to split The Hobbit into 3 films. That's not happening here, so the odds of getting a VII set a full year in advance are approximately eleventy billion to one. I love TOR sets too (well, the idea of them; I still havent' bought the two big ships), and probably would enjoy some TFU sets, but if TLG's gonna be able to tackle Legends sets going forward, I don't want it to be those two properties exclusively. There are too many fan-favorite characters in other properties, too many other interesting ideas out there that would be great to see in Lego form. But a Nico Okarr TOR set would be pretty sweet!

I agree it's expensive, but it's not like the retailer will jack it up even more because it's exclusive (I mean, TRU might occasionally do so, but usually they'll sell their exclusives for the MSRP... until it's retired, then they'll jack the price up $15 at least) Nope. This is for winter 2015, we don't even have teaser-trailers yet, or much beyond a handful of pics of a few locations, ships, creatures, and extras. With Shadow Guards included in the set, it's definitely not VII. The only reason for Shadow Guards--or any Royal Guard iteration--to exist is to serve the Emperor; well, the Emperor's been dead for 30-something years, so unless some other dark side user has assumed the throne (boooooooring) there's no need for saber-wielding Force-using royal guards. Far more likely this is Rebels-related, if it's not just an outright Legends EU set (which is fine by me, I'll take as many EU sets as I can get...well, provided the scope is broader than "TFU and TOR")